AIDS has challenged many concepts and practices within nursing. Because of the serious implications attending a positive diagnosis, and because patients with AIDS have become articulate and well informed, familiar principles have been exposed to renewed scrutiny. Anomalies and dilemmas have been revealed. Results from a recent Institute of Medical Ethics survey carried out by the author have illustrated some of the theoretical concepts. Confidentiality has assumed new dimensions. Partnership and mutual empowerment are seen as keys to sound practice involving (...) the patient in decision-making. A vital ingredient relates to the preparation of professionals; they need to be aware of those attitudes and prejudices within themselves which potentially stand in the way of caring well. (shrink)

The ethical issues around decision making on behalf of infants have been illuminated by two empirical research studies carried out in Scotland. In-depth interviews with 176 medical and nursing staff and with 108 parents of babies for whom there was discussion of treatment withholding/withdrawal, generated a wealth of data on both the decision making process and the management of cases. Both staff and parents believe that parents should be involved in treatment limitation decisions on behalf of their babies. However, whilst (...) many doctors and nurses consider the ultimate responsibility too great for families to carry, the majority of parents wish to be the final arbiters. We offer explanations for the differences in perception found in the two groups. The results of these empirical studies provide both aids to ethical reflection and guidance for clinicians dealing with these vulnerable families. They demonstrate the value of empirical data in the philosophical debate. (shrink)

We relate Popper functions to regular and perfectly additive such non-Archimedean probability functions by means of a representation theorem: every such non-Archimedean probability function is infinitesimally close to some Popper function, and vice versa. We also show that regular and perfectly additive non-Archimedean probability functions can be given a lexicographic representation. Thus Popper functions, a specific kind of non-Archimedean probability functions, and lexicographic probability functions triangulate to the same place: they are in a good sense interchangeable.

Representatives from eight European countries compared the legal, ethical and professional settings within which decision making for neonates takes place. When it comes to limiting treatment there is general agreement across all countries that overly aggressive treatment is to be discouraged. Nevertheless, strong emphasis has been placed on the need for compassionate care even where cure is not possible. Where a child will die irrespective of medical intervention, there is widespread acceptance of the practice of limiting aggressive treatment or alleviating (...) suffering even if death may be hastened as a result. Where the infant could be saved but the future outlook is bleak there is more debate, but only two countries have tested the courts with such cases. When it comes to the active intentional ending of life, the legal position is standard across Europe; it is prohibited. However, recognising those intractable situations where death may be lingering and unpleasant, Dutch paediatricians have reported that they do sometimes assist babies to die with parental consent. Two cases have been tried through the courts and recent official recommendations have set out standards by which such actions may be assessed. (shrink)

A dearth of clinical research involving children has resulted in off-licence and sometimes inappropriate medications being prescribed to the paediatric population. In this environment, recent years have seen the introduction of a raft of regulation aimed at increasing the involvement of children in clinical trials research and generating evidence-based medicinal preparations for their use. However, this regulation pays scant attention to the autonomy of competent minors. In particular, it makes no provision for the ability of competent minors to consent to (...) participate in medical research and is therefore at odds with best ethical practice. This article explores the tensions between law and ethics in relation to clinical research involving minors and concludes that greater respect should be given to the autonomy of those minors who are competent to decide for themselves. (shrink)

This paper presents novel data regarding the logophoric pronoun in Ewe. We show that, contrary to what had been assumed in the absence of the necessary fieldwork, Ewe logophors are not obligatorily interpreted de se. We discuss the prima facie rather surprising nature of this discovery given the assumptions that de se construals arise via binding of the pronoun by an abstraction operator in the left periphery of the clausal complement of an attitude predicate, and that logophors are elements that (...) are obligatorily bound by such abstractors. We show that this approach can be reconciled with these facts given the additional assumption that elements that are ‘de se’ bound can interact with the concept generator variables posited by Percus and Sauerland to derive de re interpretations of embedded nominals. The proposed set-up has consequences for our understanding of puzzles raised by Heim and Sharvit concerning binding-theoretic effects with de re elements, and for the derivation of the obligatorily de se interpretation of controlled PRO. (shrink)

This chapter compares simple predicates of personal taste (PPTs) such as tasty and beautiful with their complex counterparts (eg tastes good, looks beautiful). I argue that the former differ from the latter along two dimensions. Firstly, simple PPTs are individual-level predicates, whereas complex ones are stage-level. Secondly, covert Experiencer arguments of simple PPTs obligatorily receive a generic interpretation; by contrast, the covert Experiencer of a complex PPT can receive a generic, bound variable or referential interpretation. I provide an analysis of (...) these facts based on a novel proposal about the licensing of individual-level predicates (the ‘Licensing Condition on ILPs’). This condition states that all covert pronominal arguments of an individual-level predicate must be bound by the generic operator. Finally, I show that generic construal of the Experiencer is a necessary condition for faultless disagreement. This is evidence in favour of treatments of subjective meaning that appeal to genericity, and against relativism about PPTs. (shrink)

In this paper, we discuss specific epistemic injustices suffered by gender minorities in the Philippines. We also show that societal changes have been evident throughout the years. We review some progressive Philippine Catholic communities' sustainable development efforts toward gender equality or toward the eradication of discrimination, marginalisation, and violence based on a person's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression (SOGIE). Despite these epistemic injustices, we reveal that there are ways by which gender disorientations may be disrupted by progressive Philippine (...) Catholic groups and communities in the era of contemporary Christianities. (shrink)

The Demonic in the Political Thought of Eusebius of Caesarea explores how Eusebius of Caesarea's ideas about demons interacted with and helped to shape his thought on other topics, particularly political topics Hazel Johannessen builds on and complements recent work on early Christian and early modern demonology. Eusebius' political thought has long drawn the attention of scholars who have identified in some of his works the foundations of later Byzantine theories of kingship. However, Eusebius' political thought has not previously (...) been examined in the light of his views on demons. Moreover, despite frequent references to demons throughout many of Eusebius' works, there has been no comprehensive study of Eusebius' views on demons, until now, as expressed throughout a range of his works.The originality of this study lies both in an initial examination of Eusebius' views on demons and their place in his cosmology, and in the application of the insights derived from this to consideration of his political thought. As a result of this new perspective, Johannessen challenges scholars' traditional characterization of Eusebius as a triumphal optimist. Instead, she draws attention to his concerns about a continuing demonic threat, capable of disrupting humankind's salvation, and presents Eusebius as a more cautious figure than the one familiar to late antique scholarship. (shrink)

In his seminal paper introducing the fine structure of L, Jensen proved that under \ any regular cardinal that reflects stationary sets is weakly compact. In this paper we give a new proof of Jensen’s result that is straight-forward and accessible to those without a knowledge of Jensen’s fine structure theory. The proof here instead uses hyperfine structure, a very natural and simpler alternative to fine structure theory introduced by Friedman and Koepke.

In ethical debate the questions often matter more than the answers. By raising questions about the anomalies in clinical practice concerning the moral status of the fetus, Boyle et al are contributing to the debate.There can be no starker reminder of the legal anomaly around fetal/infant rights than the hospital which deals simultaneously with abortions and intensive care of neonates. In the course of my own clinical practice I have recoiled from the horror of late abortions being whisked to the (...) neonatal intensive care unit , and struggled with the ethical complexities of decision making for infants born at the edge of viability. But many years of detailed researching of the lived experiences of both staff and parents in relation to limitation of treatment,1,2 lead me to the conclusion that to focus discussion on fetal/infant rights is unhelpful. Theoretically the issues may well be conceptualised in this way, but the reality is very different.It is true that a mother has the right to request termination of her pregnancy at a stage where there is at least some possibility of a viable fetus . It is also true that the rights of the fetus may only be realised once it has passed through the birth canal and established itself as a separate individual. A sharp divide at 24 weeks seems illogical, and indeed the whole notion of viability is something of a legal fiction. But in reality things are not as confrontational or as irreconcilable as this paper seems to suggest. Viewed from the perspective of the doctors, nurses, and parents at the coalface of NICU, talk of the child’s rights and interests suddenly superseding those of the parents is a distortion; and a picture of arbitrary conflicting reactions on the two …. (shrink)

It is a somewhat vexed question whether presuppositions are always accommodated into the global context of utterance of the sentence, or whether they may sometimes be accommodated into a local context - the context of some subsentential constituent. Von Fintel (2008) argues that there is no local accommodation. He shows that presuppositions in the scope of universally quantified sentences, which have traditionally been handled via local accommodation (eg Heim 1983), can be accounted for by assuming that conversational participants select a (...) domain of quantification such that every relevant element of it has the property required by the presupposition in the scope. It is shown that this domain selection mechanism cannot account for a related set of data involving presupposition triggers in the restrictor rather than scope of the universal. We also discuss the relationship between quantified sentences and conditionals, and general consequences for the theory of presupposition accommodation. (shrink)

The book explores and explains the relationship between law and ethics in the context of medically related research in order to provide a practical guide to understanding for members of research ethics committees (RECs), professionals involved with medical research and those with an academic interest in the subject.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hazel E. Barnes BEAUVOIR AND SARTRE: THE FORMS OF FAREWELL There ARE MANY forms of farewell. The formal interview may be one of them, an autobiography another, the biography written by a relative or close friend of the deceased a third. In The Words Sartre bade farewell to his childhood. He thought he was saying goodbye to literature at the same time, though this adieu turned out to (...) be more in the nature of au revoir or even à bientôt. In an extended interview on the occasion of his seventieth birthday and in a three-hour documentary film, Sartre commented on the events ofhis life, his writings, his hopes and aspirations, his political judgments. Each of these was a summing up, and a selfappraisal, a final statement, too, inasmuch as Sartre's ill health and near blindness made it clear to him that he would not be writing anymore. Simone de Beauvoir obviously drew up some kind of final reckoning in the last volume of her autobiography, Tout comptefait {Account Closed). All of these are farewells of a sort, official valedictories. They have been much discussed, and I will not dwell on them here. Two other works bearing Beauvoir^ name are farewells in a different sense. They are preparations for leave-taking and records of remembrance for the bereaved. They have been combined in a volume published in late 1981, a year and a half after Sartre's death. The first of these is La Cérémonie des adieux (The Ceremony ofFarewells).? This is an account of the decade preceding Sartre's death. The title is itself a recollection of a poignant moment, as Beauvoir explains: "Then this is the ceremony of farewells!' Sartre said to me as we were leaving each other for a month at the beginning of one summer. I had a presentiment of the meaning these words would one day assume. The ceremony lasted ten years. It is these ten years that I recount in this book." The record is annalistic, the same kind of detailed year-by-year account of events and her reactions to them 21 22Philosophy and Literature mat Beauvoir employed in the first three volumes of her autobiography. But there her stated intention was to keep herselfas the center offocus and to speak of Sartre only insofar as his existence was intertwined with her own. In the preface to The Ceremony of Farewells she states that she has recorded these ten years as she had lived them, but that the book is devoted wholly to Sartre. Ifshe has spoken also ofherself, it is because "the witness is a part of what he witnesses." The book is dedicated "To those who loved Sartre, love him, will love him." Indeed, it has been written for them by one who is of them. The second work is Entretiens avecJean-Paul Sartre, a collection of interviews she herself conducted with Sartre in the summer of 1974. These have been subjected to superficial editing but by no means reworked into literature. Beauvoir wanted to give to readers the opportunity "to follow the meanders of his thought and to hear his living voice." Here she uses the method adopted in the fourth volume ofher autobiography, where she grouped her reminiscences by topics. Sartre responds at length to her questions on a vast variety ofsubjects, ranging from food likes and dislikes to his changing concepts of freedom, from sexual preferences to politics; there are comments on schoolboy fights with Merleau-Ponty, and later arguments with Camus, thoughts on literature, on death, on God. A reviewer has remarked that these interviews represent "a worthwhile approximation to the autobiography [Sartre] never wrote."2 Thus we have a work that falls in between biography and autobiography, because of the author's close involvement with her subject, and we have a set of autobiographical interviews. In both Beauvoir is recorder and commentator, Sartre central subject and actor. The two may serve for mutual corroboration and correction. Together diey express Beauvoir^ and Sartre's farewell to each other and his farewell to life. I will begin with the Interviews and focus my discussion on a few selected items which seem to me especially... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Notes and Fragments SARTRE AND SEXISM by Hazel E. Barnes Insofar as is possible, I want to consider here not Sartre the man but Sartre the philosopher—or, more precisely, the philosophy of Sartre. To askwhether Sartre's long association with Simone de Beauvoir was a model of human relations at their best or an example ofbad faith on both sides is not to my present purpose. Nor are his (...) numerous, sometimes rather unsavory affairs with other women. Of course, the man and his work cannot be separated entirely. Sartre himselfadmitted that despite his wholehearted support of women's liberation, there remained in him vestiges of ingrained male chauvinism which he found difficult to eradicate.1 We should expect to find echoes of these in his writing, and we do—not in the ideas but in the imagery and rhetoric, and these not only in the fiction but in the philosophical works. The grossest example is the well-known passage in which Sartre discusses the "existential meanings" ofslime and holes.2 Slime, the great "Antivalue," is "a moist and feminine sucking" and "a sickly-sweet feminine revenge." Moreover—and this is even worse—Sartre allows his meditation on holes to lead by a process of his own associations to the idea ofa woman's sex as "a voracious mouth" evoking the male castration complex. This is not the only place where Sartre links female with notions of a treacherous receptivity. Furthermore, such passages are complemented by others where Sartre employs male sexual imagery to describe the activity of consciousness. Knowledge is portrayed as penetration and conquest. He points out, without objecting, that banal metaphors of everyday language suggest that "knowing" has overtones of carnal knowing and sexual violation: "What is seen is possessed; to see is to deflower.... The unknown object is given as immaculate, as Philosophy and Literature, © 1990, 14: 340-347 Hazel E. Barnes341 virgin, comparable to a whiteness.... Man has not yet 'snatched' its secret away from it.... Figures of speech... like that of the 'unviolated depths of nature' suggest the idea ofsexual intercourse more plainly."3 There can be no doubt that a full investigation ofthe linguistic codes in Sartre's writing would reveal him to be a man comfortably ensconced in a world of male dominance. Yet Collins and Pierce in their excellent article, "Holes and Slime: Sexism in Sartre's Psychoanalysis," even as diey deplore Sartre's sexist language and his failure to depict any fictional female characters as embodiments of existential authenticity, admit that these weaknesses are at variance with the central philosophy ofBeing and Nothingness and not derived logically from it.4 I agree, and diat is why I hold that the sexism is there but is contingent, relevant to our appraisal of die writer but not essential to ourjudgment on the philosophy and its potential value as a support to feminism. In saying this I am partially making the sort of distinction employed by Jean Grimshaw, who points out that a philosophy built on male assumptions may exclude women essentially as with Kant, inconsistendy as with Aristode, or inadvertendy as with Descartes.5 The difference with Sartre is that in spite of the occasional lapse into traditional male linguistic tropes, the work, like its author, is notjust theoretically egalitarian but concerned explicidy with forms of oppression and the problems of disfavored groups. More than that of any other male writer, Sartre's philosophy seems to me to demand feminism as one of its natural consequences. That diis has been historically true is shown, ofcourse, by the fact that Simone de Beauvoir used Sartrean existentialism as the foundation for her own original analysis of women's situation in TL· Second Sex. The irony is diat this book, which played a key role in launching the movement for women's liberation throughout the world, has been adversely criticized by later feminists precisely on the grounds of its Sartrean orientation, along with Beauvoir's emphasis on women's right to share the things men value rather than to challenge those values. Beauvoir herself later recognized that the book did not go far enough, but she never renounced what she had written there. My claim... (shrink)

In order for children to receive the best possible medical treatment, it is essential that research is conducted to discover safe and effective interventions and dosages. This article focuses on the legal and ethical implications of recruiting into health-care research minors who are not competent to consent. It considers the role played by best interests in obtaining valid parental consent for the participation of children in research, both at common law and under the Regulations that govern clinical trials of medicinal (...) products. In doing so it questions the legality of parental consent to children's involvement in research, and identifies some inconsistencies in parental understandings of best interests in relation to medical research and treatment. (shrink)

Calls for the inclusion of women in clinical trials raise the obvious question: why have sponsors excluded them? The answer most often given is one tragically evocative word: Thalidomide. The tragedies of the children born with seal limbs because their mothers took this over-the-counter sleeping pill and cure for morning sickness showed that, contrary to previous perceptions, the placenta could not be depended upon to filter out toxins before they reached the fetus. The specter of birth defects spawned sponsors’ fears (...) of a variety of catastrophes which contributed to closing the doors of clinical trials for women.This paper will not argue that the possibility of birth defects arising from the ingestion of an experimental drug does not exist. Sadly, scientists do not yet have the ability to predict which drugs will cause birth defects. Rather, it will argue that case law does not provide a basis for sponsor liability when a woman gives informed consent and the regulations governing clinical trials are followed. (shrink)

While Sartre scholars cannot fairly be described as being opposed to science, they have, for the most part, stayed aloof. The field of psychology, of course, has been an exception. Sartre himself felt compelled to present his own existential psychoanalysis by marking the parallels and differences between his position and traditional approaches, particularly the Freudian. The same is true with respect to his concept of bad faith and of emotional behavior. Scholars have followed his lead with richly productive results. But (...) we may note that the debate has centered on psychic and therapeutic issues, aspects of what Sartre called le vécu or lived experience, rather than on the findings of cognitive science or neuroscience. Although all existentialists and phenomenologists accept as a central tenet the fact that consciousness is embodied, there has been virtually no concern with the biological substratum. But the study of consciousness cannot be restricted within its own narrow confines—unlike, say, Greek grammar, which can be learned without reference to the rules of Arabic. At some point, there must be established an organic foundation for the behavior of the conscious organism. (shrink)

Despite the vital part played by teachers in education and schooling, the role, work and status of teachers, including their preparation and continuing professional development, remain in a conditi...

This paper considers the way in which Christian Religious Education (RE) teachers articulate the difficulties and challenges they experience both in school and with their peers as they navigate their way through their Initial Teacher Education. The paper offers a unique exploration of the relationship between elements of the three discourses of faith identity, emerging professional identity and the requirements of a performative teacher training context. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 184 student RE teachers across three universities. It became clear (...) that all students interpreted the Standards and policy guidelines ambiguously, as being value-laden or value-free. The idea of the 'good teacher' as someone who was, by very definition, neutral and objective immediately made the faith position of students problematic. This is a key point in relation to the notion of performativity and education and the disproportionate impact it made on Christian students. It appeared as though many Christian students were concerned to stress that although their faith was personally important for them it was not something that contributed to their understanding of a 'good teacher'. (shrink)

Grapheme-colour synaesthesia is a perceptual experience where graphemes, letters or words evoke a specific colour, which are experienced either as spatially coincident with the grapheme inducer (projector sub-type) or elsewhere, perhaps without a definite spatial location (associator sub-type). Here, we address the question of whether synaesthesia can be rapidly produced using a hypnotic colour suggestion to examine the possibility of ‘hypnotic synaesthesia’, i.e. subjectively experienced colour hallucinations similar to those experienced by projector synaesthetes. We assess the efficacy of this intervention (...) using an “embedded figures” test, in which participants are required to detect a shape (e.g., a square) composed of local graphemic elements. For grapheme-colour synaesthetes, better performance on the task has been linked to a higher proportion of graphemes perceived as coloured. We found no performance benefits on this test when using a hypnotic suggestion, as compared to a no-suggestion control condition. The same result was found when participants were separated according to the degree to which they were susceptible to the suggestion (number of coloured trials perceived). However, we found a relationship between accuracy and subjective reports of colour in those participants who reported a large proportion of coloured trials: trials in which the embedded figure was accurately recognised (relative to trials in which it was not) were associated with reports of more intense colours occupying a greater spatial extent. Collectively, this implies that hypnotic colour was only perceived after shape detection rather than aiding in shape detection via colour-based perceptual grouping. The results suggest that hypnotically induced colours are not directly comparable to synaesthetic ones. (shrink)

This commentary explores the background to, and implications of, the recently published Director of Public Prosecutions guidelines for prosecutors in respect of cases of encouraging or assisting suicide. It considers the extent of the provisions and questions the legitimacy of their focus on the compassionate motivation of the assistant, and the apparent prohibition on healthcare professionals providing such help. It concludes by suggesting that a permissive change in the law would provide better safeguards for those who seek assisted dying.